Going Up?

Funny, how quickly and completely a fear can take root and consume a person. Equally curious are the relatively rare occasions when that gripping angst is put to rest as swiftly as it was born. How did it begin, and where will it end? Many times we don’t know; but for some, there is no doubt about the origin and demise of something which once made them tremble. My redemption from a phobia occurred on a glorious July day when I was only six years old. My family had traveled to Denver in our old jalopy camper, and, in a deviation from normal for us, checked in to a classy Radisson hotel in the shadow of the Rockies. My memories of that trip are few other than The Event that made such an impact on me.

One particular afternoon of our stay, we had gone to the camper to get some belongings to take to the room. While my mother and brothers were busy finding what they needed, I grabbed a book and curled up in the captain’s chair, immediately transported to another world and oblivious to everything around me. Vaguely, I heard the others talking about going back up to the hotel room, but I paid no attention. It was the sudden silence all around me that slowly brought my attention back to reality and the fact that everyone had gone. Not wanting to be left behind, I tossed the book aside and ran after them. Struggling to open the heavy glass door to the hotel lobby, I felt my stomach flip-flop with panic as I saw the elevator doors just closing upon my family. I simply couldn’t make myself get into an elevator alone.

My first thought was to just wait in the lobby. I wandered around, nervously running my hand along the rough upholstery on the backs of the chairs grouped around the sitting area. The receptionist was looking at me. I sat down and ruffled through a magazine, beginning to feel anxious. How long would they be up in the room? Wouldn’t someone wonder where I was?

Suddenly, the lobby doors swung open to admit a large, noisy group of senior citizens clearly enjoying their vacation. They laughed and joked as they walked to the elevators and pushed the “up” button. Flooded with relief, I swiftly joined the queue. A tall, silver-haired gentleman smiled down at me.

“Going up, young lady?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” 

I smiled happily. Everything would be fine. I didn’t have to get in the elevator alone, and I didn’t have to wait. The doors opened and I stepped in confidently, surrounded by the friendly group of people. Someone asked me for my floor, and punched the button. They fussed over me, as elderly people do, saying how sweet and darling I was.  One of the ladies asked why a little girl like me was all alone, and I assured her my mother was in our room, waiting for me. She asked if I wanted them to walk with me to our room, and I said no, I knew exactly where it was, not very far from the elevators. I would be okay.

The elevator came to rest at my floor with a gentle bump, and the doors slid open. My new friends patted my head and called out goodbyes as I exited. I waved to them happily as the doors came together, shutting them from view. I ran eagerly down the silent hall, my footsteps hushed on the richly colored carpet, past a maid rummaging through her cleaning cart. I stopped halfway down the hall and rapped lightly on our door. The maid was watching me curiously, and I grinned at her. She smiled back at me, a jolly-looking black lady in a blue uniform with a white collar and apron. 

They must be making too much noise to hear me, I thought, and knocked harder, longer. All at once, my attention left the maid and riveted on the door. I listened for long moments.

 It was not loud inside. It was very, very quiet. Suddenly panicked, I pounded on the door. No response. They were gone, and I would have to go back down in the elevator, but there were no nice people to go in with me. There were no people at all. The maid had disappeared into a room, and the muted roar of her vacuum cleaner meant she couldn’t even hear me. The hall stretched long and desolate on each side of me.

“Momma!” I screamed desperately, knowing she wasn’t there. “Momma!”

Instantly, my mind went back to another day, another hotel, another elevator, another fear. I had been four then, and Momma, my two sisters, my two brothers, and I were in an ugly, bleak room, mostly dark. My mother sat at the desk, her face illuminated by the single pool of yellow light from the small lamp, talking into the phone and crying. My little sister and I huddled together on the bed, frightened by her tears, the strangeness of the place we were in, and our elder siblings’ bitter pleadings to our mother to not go back to Daddy. Momma listened alternately to the person on the other end of the phone, then to her angry children, and wept.

Abruptly, one of my brothers opened the door. “We can’t stand it in here anymore. Can we go get a Coke from the machine in the lobby?” Distracted, sobbing, my mother waved her hand at them to go. I wanted to be anywhere but in that room, myself, but I worried about leaving my little sister. But just then, my older sister sat on the bed and pulled my little sister into her lap. I jumped up. “Momma, can I go with the boys?”I begged.  She nodded assent. I yanked the door open and ran out into the hall, just in time to see a foot disappear into the elevator and the doors close. Annoyed, I walked over, pushed the down arrow, and waited. I looked around. The lights in the hall were dim, several burned out. The carpet was dirty and worn. Everywhere, it smelled like old French fries.

The elevator opened and I stepped in. I pushed the glowing ground floor button and the doors swooshed shut. But the familiar drop-in-the-stomach descent never began. I pushed the button again. Nothing. I tried other buttons. The elevator sat there, stubbornly unmoving. I banged on the door. Silence. Frightened in earnest now, I began pounding on the doors with both fists and screaming. But when I stopped to listen, there was no sound. Push the buttons again, pound on the doors, scream. I don’t know how many times I repeated that process.

Eventually, I was just lying on the filthy elevator floor, crying. Empty gum wrappers and cigarette butts wavered in my line of sight through my tears. The floor smelled of stale tobacco and spilled beer. I was certain I would never see any of my family again. Not Momma, not the girls, not the pesky boys. Especially, not Daddy. I cried harder.

Suddenly, somehow, the doors were open. My brothers and a strange man in stained coveralls stood there. I lunged at my older brother, and he scooped me up in his arms and carried me, sobbing now with relief, to Momma. I would never, never step in another elevator alone again, I promised myself. Not ever.

The squeaky noise of the cleaning cart emerging from the room down the hall interrupted my memories, and I realized I was crying, lying on the floor in front of our closed door, in just the same way as that other time. Except this time the carpet was clean and bright, new, even. It didn’t smell.  

The maid appeared behind the cart, and when she caught sight of me, she dropped her duster and bustled over to where I lay on the floor and put her arms around me, helping me up, wiping my tears, soothing me. She was plump and soft and smelled like Ajax.

“What is the matter, darling?” she crooned.

“I thought my mom was in our room, and she’s not.” I shuddered. “And I can’t… I can’t…I can’t ride the elevator by myself.”

The maid pulled back from hugging me and looked at me in astonishment. “And just why can’t you ride the elevator by yourself?” 

I told her.

She said, “Honey, you listen to me. I’ve been riding that elevator every day for more years than you have been alive. How many times a day do you think I get in it by myself? Many times, every day. It has always gone up or down just like it is supposed to. It has never gotten stuck with me in it, not once. So don’t you think the time you got stuck in one must have been a very unusual thing?” She saw the doubt in my eyes, and she stood up, pulling me up, too. She took my hand firmly. “Come on, let me show you something.”

We walked together to the bank of elevators. “Pick one,” she said, and I did. We stepped inside. “See,” she pointed, and showed me a button that said “Door Open”. Ah. I had not been able to read when I was only four. But I was six now, and I had been reading for a long time. 

She showed me another button to push if, for some reason, the Door Open button didn’t work, which allowed a person inside the elevator to speak to maintenance on an intercom. She held my hand, and spoke with utter confidence.

“Now,” she said, “I will ride down to the lobby with you this time. But I want you to promise me that you will not be afraid of elevators anymore. They can’t hurt you. You can get help if they get stuck. Promise me? Because, honey, you can’t go through your whole life being afraid. You have to learn to trust.”

Her eyes crinkled up in a kind smile, and her teeth flashed very white in her brown face. I looked up at her, in awe of someone who rode the elevators alone every day without fear. Her absolute assurance that she knew she spoke truth shone out of her face. I promised.

She said she would walk me to our camper to find my family. 

We stepped out of the lobby into the brilliance of the July afternoon, and there, coming toward us across the parking lot, was Daddy, holding my little sister by the hand, her blond hair very bright in the sun. I looked up at the maid.

“That’s my Daddy,” I said, and smiled. She squeezed my hand.

“Remember,” she replied. “There is nothing to be afraid of anymore.”

I looked from her smiling, confident face to Daddy walking my way, and suddenly, I was absolutely sure she was right.

Stickney's Store

A row of jingling bells announces my arrival when I push the door open. It’s a friendly sound; the teenage neighbor girl behind the counter smiles and says hello as I step in on the creaky, narrow boards of the tongue-and-groove hardwood floor. This building has been a landmark here beside the Cross River gorge since 1929, but I don’t know that. I am just a little girl, and I have come in this store almost every day of my life. To me, it is a familiar place, but beloved all the same. 

There is always a sense of intimacy paired with one of anticipation that makes my heart beat high as I walk in. Very little changes from day to day, yet something is always new.

I breathe in the mixture of smells I know so well: paper, leather, peppermint, sausage, and a bit of mustiness, and smile with satisfaction. On my left, the round table and chairs sit in a flood of sunshine coming in the large square window, just as they did yesterday; but an abandoned Cook County News-Herald lying there open to the sports page tells me someone has been catching up on the Vikings’ losses since then. To the right, the long glass-topped counter stretches out, full of marvelous things resting beneath the glass, just waiting to be admired: agates, beaded Indian coin purses, knives with Lake Superior stamped on the handles, souvenir spoons. Turning post card displays and a massive old cash register anchor the two ends of the counter. Straight ahead are several dim, musty aisles loaded with overpriced pantry staples, necessities such as diapers and aspirin, even a few dusty toys; most of which sit there longer than they should because only tourists would buy them at those prices. End caps are dominated by the obligatory shirts and baseball caps emblazoned with Cross River, Schroeder, Minnesota, or Lake Superior; stuffed moose, black bears, and loons; cups, pens, and key chains. A typical, over-crowded, small tourist-town general store; but it is the wonders located at each end of the store, like brackets, that make it worth the walk every day.   

On the north end of the store, beyond the sunlit table, is a bank of postal boxes. Beautiful old copper boxes with rotary combination dials at the tops and tiny glass windows beneath, the numbers painted on the glass, four hundred of them in perfect rows.

 

 

Terminating the tiers of copper boxes is the tall, narrow post office window with the letter slot beneath; and there, leaning on the small metal counter in the window, is the postmaster, a twinkly-eyed man named Skip whom I have never seen without a smile. 

“Well, well, well,” he says, like he has a thousand times before, “if it isn’t Jeannie with the light brown hair!”

I try to act annoyed at the clichéd greeting, but I secretly love the attention. I beam at him, and then turn my attention to our mailbox while my parents take up a conversation with Skip. I know my parents have known Skip for forever, but I don’t know or care that the wall behind Skip partitions off another part of the building which used to be an inn owned and run by the Stickneys, his aunt and uncle.

I haven’t heard the story, yet, that my own mother’s very first job was there, working for them in the inn for a dollar a week when she was fifteen. 

I just know that the post office is my favorite part of the store, and I’ve already seen several slim, white envelopes leaning at an angle against the side of the box through the little glass window. Carefully, I turn the small brass knob clockwise to line the pointer up with the seven, then counter-clockwise to four, then clockwise again to eight-and-a-half. The little door opens when I twist the latch below the dial, and I draw the excitement of the day from inside. I am just ten years old, but half of the letters are for me. I may live in a town of two hundred people, but I have pen pals in several states and a few foreign countries.

I finish reading my mail, and notice that my father, serious and stern, is deep in a discussion on politics and religion with Skip, who still hasn’t lost his devil-may-care smile. The conversation shows no signs of tapering off any time soon, and tantalizing, spicy aromas draw me across the expanse of creaky wooden flooring to my second favorite place: the meat counter on the south end of the store. 

The locals may not buy the cans of pork and beans off the shelves, but they all buy meat from Bill Jordan’s meat market. A chalkboard on the wall lists his 100 specialty sausages, all of which are worth the price he puts on them. He’s there now, his massive frame wrapped in a white apron, sleeves rolled up to reveal a tattoo. He grins at me, his teeth gleaming in his swarthy face beneath a black mustache. For the thousandth time, I think he looks like the picture my imagination has painted of a pirate. He gives me a tiny sample slice from one of his famous sausages, and I close my eyes to savor the symphony of flavors on my tongue. A neighbor clad in plaid flannel shirt and jeans lounges against the counter, idly gossiping with Bill, conversation that always wanders down interesting avenues. I gaze at the meats all attractively arranged on display in the case: roasts, steaks, chops, thinly sliced cold cuts, and, of course, sausage. I have no idea that Bill graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA before I was born, or why he chose to spend his life in this tiny store making amazing sausage. To me, he is just Bill, the meat man in a white apron who looks like a pirate and tells engaging stories. 

Too soon, it is time to go. I wave to Bill, and he winks at me while the neighbor playfully pulls my braid. My mother gives permission for me to spend the rare pennies in my pocket, and I contemplate the array of gum and candy in the wooden displays on the front of the cashier’s counter. I finally decide on a pack of Fruit Stripe, because the stripes are the coolest thing ever. The neighbor girl chats with my mother as she rings up the sale. The stick of lime Fruit Stripe on my tongue begins to banish the spiciness of the sausage with its sweetness. 

The door opens, and the thundering roar of the Cross River, rushing always onward to Lake Superior, fills our ears. Taking my dad’s strong hand, I step out of the heart of my hometown and into the bright sunshine. I’ll be back tomorrow.